Denis de Rougemont, René Girard, Ernst Lubitsch and the literary «myth» of love

Borrowed from Theater but especially from Cinema, and more specifically from Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the corner (1940), an adaptation from a Hungarian play, several case studies will illustrate both authors' theses. In those examples, it will be seen how modern protagonists, confronted with a radical reassessment of their conception of love as ‘camaraderie’, and their inabilities to align their reality with their romantic aspirations, go through many forms of delusion before achieving, together, a certain degree of lucidity in their understanding of relationships.

Toufic El-Khoury is Assistant Professor (Maître de conférences) and Head of Program at the Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth (USJ, Beirut, Lebanon), Lecturer at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA, University of Balamand, Lebanon) and Research Fellow at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Interdisciplinaires en Lettres Arts Cinéma (CERILAC, Université Paris Diderot – Paris 7). He is the author of La Comédie hollywoodienne classique (1929-1945), structure triadique et médiations du désir (L’Harmattan, « Champs visuels », 2016) and the co-editor, with Alain Brenas, of La ville méditerranéenne au cinéma (Orizons, 2015). He is the editor of the Film Studies series « Cinématographies » (Orizons, Paris).